sire. Marco Polo speaks of it as “‘salutary.”*” One reason 
that strikes me is this: coffee was introduced into India 
only about 200 years ago, and tea might have been a 
little earlier; but even now tea and coffee do not form a 
part of all meals. Lunch or dinner or feast meals are ended 
in many cases with curds, buttermilk, milk or sweets. 
In all cases, however tasty or flavoured the food may be, 
the food or beverage taste is gotten rid of from the 
mouth after the mouth is washed. It is generally after 
the meal and mouth-wash that pan or a piece of nut, or 
a mixture of nuts is used to sweeten the breath. This 
habit of the aftermeal use of pan or a piece of nut is the 
most common practice that one comes across in India. 
Garcia da Orta noticed this practice about 400 years ago. 
‘*Among these people | Indians] it is so detested to smell 
bad.”’ ‘‘Everyone chews it [pan] after meals.”’ ‘‘Many 
Portuguese say that when they eat fish, they alternate 
it with betel.’’ Forster writes, ‘‘their [pan chewer’s]| 
breath is sweet; they are the exact antithesis of Italians, 
and crowd for crowd I would rather be with them {pan 
chewers ].”’ 
In all cases of pan chewing up to the beginning of the 
17th century, and in the majority of cases now, the pan 
was and is used to eat and swallow for its acquired taste, 
and the colour in the mouth is rinsable, leaving no stain 
on the teeth after washing. 
After tobacco was introduced into India by the Por- 
tuguese somewhere in the 16th century’ and its use in 
' Baber in his Memoirs for 1519-1525, describing all the useful 
plants and animals of India, makes no reference to tobacco. Garcia da 
Orta lived in India from 1534 to 1564, and in his classical works on 
Drugs and Simples of India, makes no mention of tobacco. “*Doubtless 
to the Portuguese is due the credit of having conveyed both the plant 
and the knowledge of its properties to India and China. It is said in 
the Dara-shikohi that they had conveyed it [tobacco] to the Deccan 
as early as 1508°’ (Watts). Asad Beg, in 1605, found some tobacco 
[ 183 ] 
